Archive for the ‘Unicycle’ Category

So many jugglers everywhere. It is really nice. I like the outdoor grass area where people just juggle. Everybody in their own style:

There was also a volley“ball“ field and people were playing volley-juggling. That is just like volleyball, but you play two against two, everybody with 2 clubs, the person serving has 3 clubs. That is fun to watch:

There were also many free workshops for various skills like partner acrobatics, handstands, vertical trapeze, Chinese pole, Russian board:

I participated in the slack rope workshop. That is a slack version of the slack line. I think it is more fun than slack line.

There was also a unicycle trial area with rocks and boulders to jump onto. Here are some unicyclists that gathered at the main square of the EJC area.

There were always some public performances going on, especially the street performer style.

And finally after some hours of searching I finally found him! My friend Oli from Beijing who used to come to the Beijing Jugglers workshop and amaze everybody with his skills. I knew he was at the EJC 2009 but without a mobile phone nor internet and everybody camping it was hard to get in contact with him. I thought I might see him somewhere as he is tall. But then realized that actually a lot European jugglers are tall.

My last day in Germany I went to meet two friends from the times we used to get together (artists from the Nuernberg-Erlangen region) every month and put on a variety show called „Vorsicht Variete“. I stopped performing in that group in 1999 or 2000, so I must have not seen them for such a long time. Fritz Mack used to work as an engineer in a big company. He chose to quit his job and become a full time professional artist about 2 years ago. He changed his appearance and enjoys his work as a performing artist. he is multi talented with juggling, unicycling, acrobatics, fire show and clown. It was very nice to see him and talk to him after such a long time. Tatjana Bilenko still is as fit as always and she still is devoted to circus sport doing a lot of trapeze and vertical trapeze. They run the open „Zirkus Labor“ with regular juggling get togethers (Sunday afternoons) and acro balance get togethers (Friday mornings) as well as workshops. On this picture we all look a bit wierd, especially me with my tanned face (but white neck) from the 15 days skiing.

My mother loves art and design. She holds a lot of painting workshops and also attends many art workshops herself. She is a very creative person. I have some of her work in my apartment. I think a lot of her pictures are really beautiful.

Before I finally got my track bikes I rode around Beijing on another type of fixed gear: The unicycle 独轮车. Especially the long distance unicycle with a 36 inch diameter wheel is quite fast.

In the Outdoor magazine they had a special section about environmentally friendly ways of getting to work and other „green“ things. This was already in January, but I just got to know of it now.

Julien is working on various green projects as well as finding ways how to protect oneself from pollution. And he has a blog about pollution in China. He is convinced about alternative transportation methods, e.g. roller blades, bike and also using unicycle to get to work. So they published pictures of him on his unicycle and me on my 36″ huge coker style unicycle. 绿色的伊泉骑一个轮子

It was such a beautiful Sunday: Blue sky, only some small white clouds and sunshine. There was also a bit of wind but that made it more interesting. I rode my long distance 36 inch unicycle (it is not a Coker „The Big One“ – but it is the same size and mine has a hand break) to a friends‘ house for lunch and tea before we went to the park for rock climbing and hanging out with our friends.

Today we decided to go again to a nice hidden and hard to find small Japanese Lounge with food. I went there riding my 36 inch unicycle. That always attracts a lot of attention in the streets. One great effect: all cars stop and let you pass.

The lounge is just in an apartment building in the Dawanglu Soho complex on the 35th floor. It has a wide selection of Manga books, so some Japanese men come here to read those Japanese comics. One person red about 60 book while we were there. It has a nice atmosphere, not only at night.

As it is on the 35th floor and on the famous Chang An Boulevard there is a superb view of Beijing. We had been there last weekend and I had taken the following pictures. It was such a clear day that from almost the east 3rd ring road we could see all the way west past the west 5th ring road until the West Mountains and Fragent Hills:

Here a proof that we really could see really far. In the right of this picture is the TV tower which is on the west 3rd ring road. Please also see the amount of cars on the Chang An Boulevard in the front left side of the picture.

At night the traffic stream at least looks nice…

The lounge has some nice Japanese food which are served on the typical lunch box style plates and with misu soup. Before 6pm they have an all you can drink (for soft drinks and tea or coffee) which is really nice. They also have Sochu sour and free internet 🙂

Today I went and met with the unicycle hockey group in Hong Kong. They meet every Monday evening at North Point on an outdoor court to play hockey while seated on unicycles. It is really fun. We played about 5 against 5 and it took us 2 hours to get a 11 to 10 win. Almost every time I hit the ball I fell off the unicycle. But is so much fun.

If you ever come to Hong Kong drop by and have fun. Here is the website that contains also other information about unicycling: http://www.unihk.org/

Also if you are looking for information about outdoors in Hong Kong, this is a good website: http://www.hkoutdoors.com/